[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 101 (Wednesday, July 10, 1996)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1233]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

[[Page E1233]]


                   REPUBLICAN FISCAL IRRESPONSIBILITY

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                           HON. BARNEY FRANK

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, July 10, 1996

  Mr. FRANK of Masachusetts. Mr. Speaker, one central item has been 
underplayed in the important debate about how to bring the annual 
budget deficit down to zero--the need to reduce our military spending 
after the collapse of the Soviet empire. The implications of the 
military budget are crucial for any effort to deal with deficit 
reduction in a socially responsible way. The actions taken by the 
Republican dominated Congress this year and last year demonstrate a 
determination by them to increase military spending to the point where 
we will be able to bring the deficit to zero only by devastating 
reductions in important programs, in education, environment, and 
medical care.
  Even more daunting than the $18 billion the Republican Congress has 
added to military spending over the Pentagon's objection in the last 2 
years is the prospect that we face in the future should Republican 
efforts succeed. Next November will decide whether or not the military 
budget will continue to swell, at the expense of virtually every other 
important national Government function.
  Doug Bandow, a fellow at the Cato Institute, discussed the staggering 
fiscal implications of the Republican military budget proposals in a 
recent article on the op-ed page of the New York Times. As Mr. Bandow 
notes, the United States now spends almost 40 percent of all the 
military spending in the world. The reason for this, as he notes, is 
not our national security but our inexplicable willingness--even 
insistence--on heavily subsidizing our wealthiest allies by providing 
them with a defense courtesy of the American taxpayer. One of Mr. 
Bandow's most important points is his noting that we now spend on the 
military ``twice as much as Britain, France, Germany, and Japan 
combined.''
  Mr. Speaker, because drastic reductions in military spending over the 
next decade are essential if we are to be able to balance our budget 
without causing severe social harm in the United States, I ask that 
Doug Bandow's thoughtful discussion of military spending be printed 
here.

                       [From the New York Times]

                          Dole's Military Card

                            (By Doug Bandow)

       So far, the Presidential campaign is being waged largely 
     over domestic issues. Yet the difference between the parties 
     is much wider when it comes to military matters.
       If leading Republican strategists have their way, the 
     United States will commit American lives and wealth to 
     enforcing a new form of imperial order.
       As he campaigns, Bob Dole has said little more than that 
     America must spend more on the military. The Clinton 
     Administration has ``eroded American power and purpose,'' he 
     said recently. ``Our defense budget has been cut too far and 
     too fast.''
       So military outlays must rise above the current $260 
     billion per year. How far, he doesn't say. But the 
     conservative Heritage Foundation has started the bidding at 
     $20 billion more annually. Baker Spring, a Heritage defense 
     analyst, wrote in a recent policy paper that ``the time is 
     rapidly approaching when the U.S. will have to decide between 
     remaining a global power capable of preventing wars, or 
     becoming a mere regional military power, condemned to fight 
     and possibly lose them.''
       He writes this at a time when America is a military 
     colossus. The United States accounts for almost 40 percent of 
     all military spending on earth. It spends at least three 
     times as much as Russia--and twice as much as Britain, 
     France, Germany and Japan combined.
       America's allies can stand up to every conceivable security 
     threat on their own. Western Europe's gross domestic product 
     and population are greater than our own. South Korea has 
     about 18 times the gross domestic product and twice the 
     population of North Korea. In such a world we risk losing a 
     war? To whom?
       Some Republican analysts want to increase military outlays 
     by far more than $20 billion. In the latest issue of Foreign 
     Affairs, William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, and 
     Robert Kagan, a former policy analyst for the Bush 
     Administration, called for an extra $60 billion to $80 
     billion. This would come on top of defense spending that is 
     already, in real terms, higher than in 1980, when America 
     still faced the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact nations and the 
     threat of global Communism.
       Mr. Kristol and Mr. Kagan, however, may be pikers compared 
     to Haley Barbour, the Republican National Party chairman. In 
     this new book. ``Agenda for America,'' Mr. Barbour argues 
     that we must ``rejuvenate our military capability.'' He 
     advocates improving military readiness, expanding procurement 
     and strengthening the private military supply sector. Like 
     Mr. Dole, he supplies no price tag, but Jonathan Clarke, a 
     Cato Institute associate, figures the Barbour program could 
     add up to an astounding annual increase of $140 billion.
       What is the United States to do with all this additional 
     military might? It faces no serious security threat far 
     greater than necessary to defend the country or backstop our 
     prosperous allies in an emergency.
       Such an enormous military buildup to meddle in civil wars 
     in distant continents, to restore order in chaotic societies 
     and to extend American security guarantees through NATO, 
     right up to Russia's borders. The idea, in the words of Mr. 
     Kristol and Mr. Kagan, is to establish a ``benevolent 
     hegemony'' and to ``preserve that hegemony as far into the 
     future as possible.''
       They argue that this ``is not a radical proposal,'' but it 
     is. In effect it would mean, as the historian Francis 
     Fukuyama wrote approving in a letter to Commentary, that 
     ``Americans should be prepared, when the time comes, to have 
     their people die for Poland.''
       Similarly, Edward Luttwak, a former Reagan policy adviser, 
     waxed nostalgic in Foreign Affairs about large families. When 
     they predominated, he wrote; ``a death in combat was not the 
     extraordinary and fundamentally unacceptable event that it is 
     now.''
       So what is Bob Dole's proposed military policy? The 
     American people should not accept vague proposals about 
     spending more on defense. And if he becomes President, Mr. 
     Dole should create a foreign policy and military fit for the 
     Republic America purports to be, not the empire some wish it 
     to become.

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